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The New York neighborhood known as Turtle Bay is slowly sequestered from the rest of Manhattan before the UN General Assembly
Patrol boats go up and down the East River. The NYPD's coffee and donut truck will soon be parked on 42nd Street.
The New York neighborhood known as Turtle Bay is slowly being sequestered from the rest of Manhattan, the temporary border marked by concrete posts, metal grilles and a small army of police.
The annual Carnival of Global Diplomacy is about to begin.
The United Nations General Assembly. Or UNGA, as we know in an organization addicted to acronyms. Or #UNGA, to use the hashtag hieroglyphs of the social media era.
Not the diplomacy of Twitter, but the real face to face.
Some 84 heads of state and 44 heads of government travel to New York, once again demonstrating the unique convening power of this besieged world institution.
Inevitably, however, the week will be dominated by the return of the former New York real estate mogul who made himself known a few blocks from Fifth Avenue and whose pre-presidential relations with the UN were centered on the $ 1 billion contract. renovate its seat.
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UN Secretary-General Guterres (left) has been careful to avoid a violation of public administration with the Trump administration.
Donald Trump makes his second appearance at UNGA, and this year, he will not only have the platform of the Speaker's tribune at the General Assembly – in front of green marble tiles he would call "cheap" – but also the famous horseshoe table of the Security Council.
By luck of the calendar, the United States occupies this month the rotating presidency of this body and Wednesday, Donald Trump will chair a meeting.
Initially, the Trump administration wanted the session to focus solely on Iran.
This, however, was likely to highlight America's isolation from the Security Council on the Iranian nuclear deal.
The agenda has therefore been expanded to discuss the more generalized theme of the "proliferation of weapons of mass destruction", probably to prevent other signatories, such as Britain and France, from openly criticizing the withdrawal of the Trump administration. 2015 to codify.
Maybe this memo has been removed from the president's office. Or if it is, he ignores it. "I will chair the United Nations Security Council meeting on Iran next week!" he tweeted on Friday.
Usually, meetings open to the Security Council are strongly written.
The chairman of the board should also adhere to a formally boring wording. It will be fascinating to see how this free president of any standard behaves.
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This will be Donald Trump's second general meeting
True, the room has a cinematic feel and is probably the closest thing to international diplomacy compared to a corporate boardroom.
In other words, it's precisely the kind of scene that he enjoys.
Yet he tends to be more respectful of protocol and norms in historically charged contexts, as he has previously shown at the Vatican and at Windsor Castle. So who knows?
In his speech at the general assembly, it is hard to imagine that Mr. Trump is using more incendiary language than he has deployed last year.
Making his debut at the UN, he threatened to erase a member state, North Korea, from the map. In what sounded in some parts as a live performance of his Twitter feed, he also mocked Kim Jong-un as "Rocket Man".
At the time, the war on the Korean peninsula seemed to be a real possibility of fire and fury.
Twelve months later, relations between Washington and Pyongyang have deteriorated dramatically because of the Singapore summit between Trump and his North Korean counterpart.
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Making his debut at the UN, Trump threatened to erase a member state, North Korea, from the map
Instead, his most striking rhetoric could end up targeting Tehran.
It will examine a multi-national audience more skeptical than last year.
The decision of the Trump administration to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem sparked a wave of criticism from member states to the UN.
Iran's nuclear deal enjoys strong support. Its withdrawal from the agreement on climate change in Paris is still raging. The trade war with China is intensifying and it is still in conflict with the EU and Canada.
Trump reprimanded NATO allies about burden sharing and even refused to sign a joint communiqué at the end of the G7 in Quebec City. For many listeners in the room, America First means America alone.
What will President Trump say about the UN itself and the rules-based international order it has been designed to institutionalize?
The dark joke in Turtle Bay is that the largest UN peacekeeping mission is currently focused on the White House.
This mission, while giving results from the beginning, has encountered problems.
- Why did the United States leave the United Nations Human Rights Council?
- The very personal diplomacy of Donald Trump
Although Donald Trump tends to avoid Twitter tirades against the UN – he does not receive the treatment of NATO or the World Trade Organization – his administration has repeatedly hit against the Organization that America has helped to create and provides 22% of the funding.
He withdrew from the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council, Unesco and the Paris agreement on climate change.
It reduced funding for the UN Palestinian Relief Agency (UNRWA), the United Nations Population Fund and some peacekeeping missions.
She refused to sign a pact on migration, recently threatened the International Criminal Court with sanctions and regularly complains about what she sees as the anti-Israeli bias of the UN.
President Trump should focus on US sovereignty in his speech and reaffirm that his country will not be bound by the UN mandates.
"The will of the American people will never be the will of the international community," said US Ambassador Nikki Haley during the presentation of her speech.
It could therefore be a provocative response from a president who was more determined in his second year to follow his own nationalistic instincts on issues such as trade and Iran.
However, fears that his presidency posed an existential threat to the United Nations proved to be exaggerated.
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Ambassador Nikki Haley has a different worldview than her boss
The Trumpian destruction bullet did not cause as much damage as many diplomats of the day feared.
Nikki Haley, a more internationalist, has alleviated much of the potential damage, and even early Americans recognize that in some areas global cooperation is inevitable given the transnational nature of certain issues.
This explains Trump's first event at the UN General Assembly, a meeting he is organizing on the global fight against narcotics with more than 120 countries present.
Even unilateralists need multilateral partners, especially on issues such as the proliferation of opioids that are of great concern to US voters.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, a former Portuguese prime minister, is often considered a more effective politician than a diplomat, and he has been careful to avoid a public violation by the Trump administration.
During his first year in office, it was almost as if the former Socialist leader had made a Trappist wish for silence when it came to dealing with the billionaire president.
Early on, he also built a strong working relationship with Nikki Haley, whom he considered a defender of the international system.
However, Mr. Guterres seems to have a hard time suppressing his true feelings.
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In a recent interview with Atlantic magazine, he said the unassuming power of the United States was "reduced at the moment", though, as always, he avoided pointing fingers at the American president.
Mr. Trump will not monopolize the full attention of the UNGA. But the absence of leaders such as Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Narendra Modi and even Pakistan's new prime minister, Imran Khan, is still raising its VIP status.
Rumors abounded that Kim Jong-un would belittle the New York party late, one of the few things that could possibly overtake Trump. But this speculation is rather a case of journalistic leanings.
Will Trump be Trump? Or will this president of America First be more respectful of diplomatic norms within multilateralism?
Make sure to watch this week to find out.
Nikki Haley predicts the biggest TV ratings for a UN Security Council. It will be music in the ears of his boss.
